Hi lovely hosts,
Hope this finds you all well. What an adventure hosting on airbnb has become these days…
We don’t usually host long term stays but accepted a reservation from a traveling couple for a 4 month stay.
Our house is located in NY where (like CA and IL) squatter laws apply. This means that if a guest is in your home for 30 days, they have full “resident” rights and you can not get them out even if they stop paying rent… The only way to evict them is to hire an attorney to start the eviction process and it can take 6 months to 2 years to get them out, during which time you are not allowed to use your home, change the locks or turn off the utilities.
The gf agreed to a lease and when the time came to vet them, she resisted and delayed giving us the necessary information culminating with her giving us a fake SSN for her boyfriend. Also his name on airbnb acct was not the full name on his DL. She also refused to purchase renters insurance which is not that expensive.
Not sure what she thought she would accomplish with a fake ssn but at this point, we no longer felt comfortable hosting them and contacted airbnb.
To their credit, airbnb cancelled their reservation without penalty to us, but the couple became enraged and started booking the entire 4 month period in 29 day increments… basically demanding access to our home. There are hundreds of airbnb homes in our area, but they seem fixated on ours for some reason.
Moral of the story is: if you live in NY, CA or IL, exercise caution with long term rentals. Now that the Covid Eviction moratorium has ended, it seems conmen and women are on the move to airbnb.